Lions
Gate Home Entertainment (DVD), ASIN: B00006HAXZIf viewers enjoy
a psychological limbo dance, they will adore the film Beat.
This movie embarks on an exploration of how low the human race can descend
as it portrays increasingly despicable acts. How about a husband announcing
to his wife that he prefers having a paid affair with another man? Check!
And if he is the heir to an amazing fortune but spends his last penny
on his reluctant paramour? Check again! Then, how can she willingly play
a little game of William Tell, posing dramatically while he aims a gun,
his hand shaking, at her outstandingly blond head? Audiences will find
themselves asking these very questions -- and many more -- as they puzzle
over two murders which intertwine with a controversial genius's best sellers.

In
these ghostly theatrics, the anti-hero himself seems to rise from his
grave to tell his tale of ghastly freedom -- at last! -- from writer's
block. Fans of the Beat Generation writers can't help but be fascinated
by this historically inspired plot. Its central character is William Seward
Burroughs II, none other than the author of Junky, Queer,
The Adding Machine, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
and Naked Lunch. If anything, this film shows that Burroughs'
capacity to shock remains undiminished. The body died in 1997, but his
range remains clear enough in selected rock groups, which still echo his
themes and tactics.

The story-line will
justifiably outrage special interest groups, leaping bounds, as it does,
in testing the tastes of its audience. Tackling an enormously difficult
role, Kiefer Sutherland plays the totally self-absorbed writer like a
Bach exercise, faithfully recreating the famous gravely voice. Still,
even Sutherland can bring no sympathy to a character who bludgeons his
wife over the head with his homosexuality. Burroughs's common-law spouse,
Joan Vollmer, hardly earns the outcries of feminists. She chooses to stand
by her man, although he behaves like a petty gangster. Perhaps the writers
and directors intended this film to offer an ironic vision of hell.

For its very inexplicability,
fans of psychological mysteries may eat this movie up like strawberry
cream. This delicious color halos ancient ruins and a volcano as the cast
jaunts to Guatemala and Mexico City. In these exotic locations, the erstwhile
literati play out their deadly drama, pooled in blue, draped in green.
Intermittently, flashbacks flicker through their minds, black and white
images as stirring as the newspaper headlines that might cry, "Murder!"
Courtney Love merits special praise for bringing to life a hard-bitten
muse -- both contradictory and provocative. As if all this hoopla did
not set its audience on edge, the movie contains two killings which may
or may not be linked. See this movie and decide precisely where greatness
ends and infamy begins, or if, in this case, anyone can tell the difference.

Bring Freud to the
screening, if possible. He may be able to figure these guys out, although
a death wish will be no news to him.